I was sitting at the bridge table last week when my phone buzzed. I was trying to make an impossible one-no-trump contract, so I ignored the call. No, I won’t bore you with the details, but when the hand was done, I did answer the buzzing phone (yes, I made the contract). As you might have guessed, it was Ms. Pigette calling from her perch beside Route 27 on the way to Wiscasset.

“Did you see him?” she asked.

No, I answered. I am playing bridge, and am rather busy right now. What is it that can’t wait for a half hour?

“Listen. He did the damndest thing. I never thought I would see a president of the USA, the most powerful man on the planet, the role model for all our children, do, and do it while he was on television,” she said.

What now? I asked.

Did he invade Venezuela again?  Did he impose tariffs on Minnesota, Greenland, or some other place that dared to elect Democratic Party presidential electors? Did he order his stooges at the Justice Department to investigate his political critics, again?

Did he send 2,000 ICE agents into a city that has fewer than 1,000 cops? Did the town’s residents balk at the idea of armed and masked agents, in bulletproof vests, stopping citizens on the street, demanding to see their papers?

Did he back down when these ICE agents hauled off Americans, despite their claims of being lawful citizens?

“No, idiot,” said Ms. P. “He was at a Ford factory when a worker accused him of protecting Jeffrey Epstein by calling him a pedophile protector. The prez then yelled something back at the factory guy.  I am not sure what he said, but most accounts allege it was a two-word retort. The second word was most likely you.

"Then, as the cameras were rolling, the commander in chief balled up his fist and flashed the bird at his accuser,” Ms. P. said.

I was a bit surprised to be told that the prez flashed an obscene gesture, a universal sign of derision, but suggested to my lovely and very chilly pal that POTUS might have used one of his favorite nicknames on the factory guy, as he does with “Sleepy” Joe Biden, or Sen. Adam “Shifty” Schiff, I said. But no, he went into the full fifth-grade parking lot mode and gave him the old one-fingered salute.
When asked for comment on the gesture, the White House press stooges doubled down, calling it an “appropriate and unambiguous response” to the Epstein pedophile protector reference.

Unambiguous, yes. Appropriate?

Meanwhile, the internet says the Ford worker who challenged the president is T.J. Sabula, 40, a production line worker. He was quickly suspended with pay. The UAW backed their guy, and someone set up a “GoFundMe” page. One website said that as of mid-morning on Jan. 15, the pair of campaigns for Sabula raised $811,010 from nearly 35,000 separate donations.

Sabula, a stand-up guy, decided to stop accepting donations, indicating he and his family had more than enough money. He urged donors to support other charitable causes.

While the White House defended the presidential one-fingered unambiguous gesture as appropriate, a day or so later, the press secretary chided Minneapolis protesters for daring to raise their middle finger at ICE agents.

“Did you ever think we would be holding an adult public discussion about this gesture?” asked Ms. P.

Well, I replied. I remember one of my childhood pals getting his mouth washed out with dish soap when he dared to voice obscene words associated with the gesture.

In fact, the flap over the gesture is almost a quaint throwback to the not-so-distant past when Nelson Rockefeller was written off as a presidential candidate because he was divorced, or the Smothers Brothers TV show was canceled when they sang ditties about dodging the draft.

Now we have a president who not only dodged the draft five times but has been divorced three times. Then flips the bird as an “appropriate and unambiguous response” to a critic.

“So?” Ms.P. asked. “There is a lot of chatter about ICE agents coming to Maine to search for immigrants as they have done in Minneapolis.

Our Republican Sen. Susan Collins said she thought it was a bad idea. Independent Sen. Angus King echoed her thoughts, and Democratic Gov. Janet Mills was not very happy to hear those rumors, either.

“Look, you old Scribbler," she said. “What do you think Mainers will do if ICE marches into Lewiston and starts pulling folks out of cars, busting in doors, and grabbing people off the street?”

Well, it seems to me most Maine residents don’t care much for folks from away telling them what to do.